From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill speaks to the CIA agents, mercenaries, and elite Special Operations Forces operators who populate the dark side of American war-fighting. He goes deep into al Qaeda-held territory in Yemen and walks the streets of Mogadishu with CIA-backed warlords. We also meet the survivors of US night raids and drone strikes - including families of US citizens targeted for assassination by their own government - who reveal the human consequences of the dirty wars the United States struggles to keep hidden.

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

A largely untold facet of the war on terror is the widespread outsourcing of military tasks to private mercenary companies. Accountable neither to the citizenry nor to standard military legal codes, these largely unregulated corporate armies are being entrusted with ever-greater responsibilities on behalf of the nation.

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan. With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998.

Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War

For the last half century, as administrations have come and gone, the fundamental assumptions about America's military policy have remained unchanged: American security requires the United States (and us alone) to maintain a permanent armed presence around the globe, to prepare our forces for military operations in far-flung regions, and to be ready to intervene anywhere at any time. In the Obama era, just as in the Bush years, these beliefs remain unquestioned gospel.

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

In late 2010, thousands of hacktivists joined a mass digital assault by Anonymous on the websites of VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal to protest their treatment of WikiLeaks. Splinter groups then infiltrated the networks of totalitarian governments in Libya and Tunisia, and an elite team of six people calling themselves LulzSec attacked the FBI, CIA, and Sony. They were flippant and taunting, grabbed headlines, and amassed more than a quarter of a million Twitter followers.

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth

Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Mazzetti examines secret wars over the past decade, tracking key characters from the intelligence and military communities across the world. Among the characters we meet in The Way of the Knife are a young CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played; an Air Force test pilot who fired the first drone missile in the Nevada desert; and a chain-smoking Pentagon official who ran an off-the-books spying operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels. That source turned out to be the 29-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency’s widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security....

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War

Ever since 9/11 America has fought an endless war on terror, seeking enemies everywhere and never promising peace. In Pay Any Price, James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany of the hidden costs of that war: from squandered and stolen dollars, to outrageous abuses of power, to wars on normalcy, decency, and truth. In the name of fighting terrorism, our government has done things every bit as shameful as its historic wartime abuses - and until this audiobook, it has worked very hard to cover them up.

John L. Moncrief says:"If you care about our liberties, read this book."

Gray Work: Confessions of an American Paramilitary Spy

In this unprecedented audiobook, a paramilitary contractor with more than two decades of experience gives us a firsthand look into the secret lives of America's private warriors and their highly covert work around the world. Author Jamie Smith has planned and executed hundreds of missions on behalf of government agencies and private industry in some of the world's most dangerous hot spots - and lived to tell the tale.

Wages of Rebellion

Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges - who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class - investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance.

Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service

In Mossad, authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions in the agency's 60-year history.

Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Over a 35-year career, Daniel Bolger rose through the army infantry to become a three-star general, commanding in both theaters of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He participated in meetings with top-level military and civilian players, where strategy was made and managed. At the same time, he regularly carried a rifle alongside rank-and-file soldiers in combat actions - unusual for a general.

Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins

This essential, pause-resister narrative on the history of drone warfare by the acclaimed author of Rumsfeld explores how this practice emerged, who made it happen, and the real consequences of targeted killing.

ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror

Initially dismissed by US President Barack Obama, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shocked the world by conquering massive territories in both countries and promising to create a vast new Muslim caliphate that observes the strict dictates of Sharia law. In ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, American journalist Michael Weiss and Syrian analyst Hassan Hassan explain how these violent extremists evolved from a nearly defeated Iraqi insurgent group into a jihadi army of international volunteers who have conquered territory equal to the size of Great Britain.

ISIS: The State of Terror

The Islamic State, known as ISIS, exploded into the public eye in 2014 with startling speed and shocking brutality. It has captured the imagination of the global jihadist movement, attracting recruits in unprecedented numbers and wreaking bloody destruction with a sadistic glee that has alienated even the hardcore terrorists of its parent organization, al Qaeda. Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, two of America’s leading experts on terrorism, dissect the new model for violent extremism that ISIS has leveraged into an empire of death in Iraq and Syria, and an international network that is rapidly expanding in the Middle East, North Africa and around the world.

The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins

Assassination has been dramatized by literature and politicized by infamous murders throughout history, and for Robert Baer, one of the most accomplished agents to ever work for the CIA, it's a source of endless fascination, speculation, and intrigue. Over several decades, Baer served as an operative, from Iraq to New Delhi and beyond; notably, his career was the model for the acclaimed movie Syriana.

Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception

Imagine how different your life would be if you could tell whether someone was lying or telling you the truth. Be it hiring a new employee, investing in a financial interest, speaking with your child about drugs, confronting your significant other about suspected infidelity, or even dating someone new, having the ability to unmask a lie can have far-reaching and even life-altering consequences. As former CIA officers, Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, and Susan Carnicero are among the world’s best at recognizing deceptive behavior.

A Quick & Dirty Guide to War: The Tools for Understanding the Global War on Terror, Cyber War, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, China, Afghanistan, the Balkans, East Africa, Colombia, Mexico, and Other Hot Spots

War-game simulation specialists James F. Dunnigan and Austin Bay have revised their highly regarded analyses, bringing up to date not only the many conventional conflicts around the world today but the new battlegrounds that have emerged since the previous edition was published more than a decade ago - the Global War on Terror, counterinsurgency struggles around the world and the latest frontier of modern combat: cyber war.

The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan

An explosive, behind-the-scenes look into the workings of the U.S. war in Afghanistan that lifts the curtain of the world stage to reveal the devastating greed, waste, and failure surrounding this unwinnable war.

88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary

In his gripping narrative, we meet General Tommy Franks, who bridles at CIA control of "his" war; General "Jafar Amin", a gruff Pakistani intelligence officer who saves Grenier from committing career suicide; Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's brilliant ambassador to the US, who tries to warn her government of the al-Qaeda threat; "Mark", the CIA operator who guides GulAgha Shirzai to bloody victory over the Taliban.

Inside Delta Force: The Story of America’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit

Delta Force—the US Army’s most elite top-secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won’t hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions, and no book has ever taken readers inside—until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action to reveal the never-before-told story of First Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force).

Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Warfare

Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country's vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan.

Among Heroes: A U.S. Navy SEAL's True Story of Friendship, Heroism, and the Ultimate Sacrifice

From Brandon Webb, Navy SEAL sniper and New York Times best-selling author, comes his account of the eight friends and fellow SEALs who made the ultimate sacrifice. As a Navy SEAL, Webb rose to the top of the world's most elite sniper corps, experiencing years of punishing training and combat missions from the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan. Along the way, Webb served beside, trained, and supported men he came to know not just as fellow warriors, but as friends and, eventually, as heroes.

Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror

Blackwater is one of the most misunderstood companies of our time. As Erik Prince, its founder and former CEO, writes: "Hundreds of American citizens employed by private military contractors, or PMCs, would lose their lives helping our government wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, only to have their memory tarnished by the unfair and/or ignorant depiction of PMCs as profiteers, jackbooted thugs, or worse."

The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA

From the author of Argo comes an unforgettable behind-the-scenes story of espionage in action. In the first ever memoir by a top-level operative to be authorized by the CIA, Antonio J. Mendez reveals the cunning tricks and insights that helped save hundreds from deadly situations.

Publisher's Summary

In this groundbreaking book of new reportage, sure to stir a global debate, journalist Jeremy Scahill - author of the acclaimed international best seller Blackwater - takes us into the heart of the War on Terror’s most dangerous battlefields as he chases down the most important foreign-policy story of our time.

From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill speaks to the CIA agents, mercenaries, and elite Special Operations Forces operators who populate the dark side of American war-fighting. He goes deep into al Qaeda-held territory in Yemen and walks the streets of Mogadishu with CIA-backed warlords. We also meet the survivors of US night raids and drone strikes - including families of US citizens targeted for assassination by their own government - who reveal the human consequences of the dirty wars the United States struggles to keep hidden.

Written in a gripping, action-packed narrative nonfiction style, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield reveals that, despite his pledge to bring accountability to US wars and to end Bush-era abuses, President Barack Obama has kept in place many of the most dangerous and secret programs that thrived under his predecessor. In stunning detail, Scahill exposes how Obama has escalated these secret US wars and has built up an elite secret US military unit that answers to no one but the president himself. Scahill reveals the existence of previously unreported secret prisons, kidnappings, assassinations, and cover-ups of covert operations gone terribly wrong.

In this remarkable story from the frontlines of the undeclared battlefields of the War on Terror, journalist Jeremy Scahill documents the new paradigm of American war: fought far from any declared battlefield, by units that do not officially exist, in thousands of operations a month that are never publicly acknowledged.

The devastating picture that emerges in Dirty Wars is of a secret US killing machine that has grown more powerful than whatever president happens to reside in the White House. Scahill argues that far from keeping the United States - and the world - safe from terrorism, these covert American wars ensure that the terror will grow and spread.

What the Critics Say

“Dirty Wars is the most thorough and authoritative history I’ve read yet of the causes and consequences of America’s post-9/11 conflation of war and national security. I know of no other journalist who could have written it: for over a decade, Scahill has visited the war zones, overt and covert; interviewed the soldiers, spooks, jihadists, and victims; and seen with his own eyes the fruits of America’s bipartisan war fever. He risked his life many times over to write this book, and the result is a masterpiece of insight, journalism, and true patriotism.”—Barry Eisler, New York Times bestselling author

“There is no journalist in America who has exposed the truth about US government militarism more bravely, more relentlessly, and more valuably than Jeremy Scahill. Dirty Wars is highly gripping and dramatic, and of unparalleled importance in understanding the destruction being sown in our name.”—Glenn Greenwald, New York Times bestselling author and Guardian columnist

THANK YOU JEREMY SCAHILL for bringing us Dirty Wars -- this is a book that had to be written, and in my view it should be read by everyone who is concerned about where our country is headed in its relations with the rest of the world. Succeeds brilliantly in describing how, and why, our most secretive, clandestine defense and national security assets (JSCO, drones) have evolved into the weapons of choice of our political and military leaders, and the shattering implications of this trend. Throughout Dirty Wars we follow the saga of US citizen Anwar Awlaki, targeted for "elimination" by the Oval Office without a shred of due process. Scahill very skillfully puts his story into its global context, but at the same time brings us back again and again to the heart-breakening, human story behind the so-called "signature strike" -- assassination by any other name -- that ultimately killed Awlaki, Samir Khan (another young American), and, soon thereafter, Awlaki's teenaged son and other family members.

Dirty Wars is not a hatchet job against Obama or Bush or any political group in particular. It's about how we as a nation have ceded basic constitutional rights and responsibilities in the name of fighting terrorism, even as, unwittingly, more terrorists and America-haters are created in consequence of our actions.

Scahill's book appears amid a flood of recent stories about NSA etc. harvesting all of our email and phone calls. But one question I haven't heard the media ask is: what the heck are they doing with all that information, what is its practical purpose? But having read Dirty Wars, the answer is pretty clear: they're using it to detect patterns of behavior and build out profiles and "signatures" for the list of kill targets that goes to the president's desk. All of this is going on extra-judicially, beyond any attempt at oversight, much less within legal structures. It is frightening.

First off, this is a GREAT book. Very well researched, full of new information, and written in a way that will hold your attention; especially if you enjoy CIA/black ops/ SEALs stuff.

Now for the negative, and it's not really a negative, just something you should keep in mind.

This author comes across as VERY anti-targeted strikes/ anti-drones. In fairness, he does present both sides of the argument, but he presents much more of the "innocent civilian casualties" side than perhaps is necessary.

He tends to disregard the mindset of most Americans, which is "if people are hanging out with terrorists (IE in the same car with them), then they are probably people that are a threat to the US" I'm not saying I agree with this, and there are always exceptions, but it's certainly a stance that deserved more weight in the book. Let's face it, other than journalists, there aren't many "innocent" people riding around in cars in the desert with the leaders of Al Qaeda. There just aren't.

This didn't paint my enjoyment of the book, however. The author doesn't beat you over the head with one particular opinion or the other, he just simply spends a bit too much time talking to the family members of suspected terrorists. For the most part, he sets out all the facts and lets you decide. I'd give this book 5 stars, simply based on the classified information and incredible interviews that are inside. The story and narrator make it outstanding.

I started out thinking this book would be a total bashing of the Bush administration but the author was balanced in his treatment of current and past administrations.

Additionally it gave me a much better understanding of how the Executive branch of the US government has managed to side step most of the review process put in place at the end of the Vietnam war to control covert operations. It was real eye opener to hear how little hard evidence is required before a drone strike can be order and how little concern within administration there is for collateral damage and deaths caused by the strikes.

I have only just begun listening to this book and as expected it has all the diligent and intelligent insight and reporting I expect from Scahill. However, Maddow, Soufan, Hastings, all found the time to be able to narrate their books themselves not to mention Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbertt. This narrators voice has just thrown me off from the beginning and for a book that is so definitely steeped in Jeremy Scahill's unique intelectual voice it would be nice to have his physical voice as well.

I thought this would be a good story about the possible unlawful use of force by the American military in other countries and, to a large degree, it was. But, in telling the story, the author also provided an incredible picture of one of the most effective and efficient non-traditional military forces in the world - JSOC. It amazes how well they are trained, supplied, and led while, at the same time, are abused by the very government they serve.

This was one of the best books I have read about the US special operations world.

Listening to this book feels a bit like being in a military briefing. It is so jam packed with information and the reader delivers every piece with the same level importance. I found it tough to listen to for long periods of time.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This book makes me angry. I don't know that I've ever heard in this much detail the specifics of the US military actions around the world. It's disheartening to hear all of it... albeit important to be made aware of.

Any additional comments?

Jeremy Scahill is one of the few reporters in the world that I trust at this point.

It quickly becomes obvious as to where the author stands with his view on war, and what he thinks of the United States when it comes to geopolitics. It's hard to discern fact from fiction, because the author integrates so much of his own hyperbole with hard facts, and first person testimony, it becomes a convoluted mess.

There are some very interesting stories and research the author has done, but at times it feels like on Oliver Stone movie where he's presenting the data in a way that supports his opinion as opposed to just giving the reader the facts. Almost every personal testimony presents them as an innocent civilian, who has been unfairly targeted by the evil US government.

I don't think there was any story the author presented where the US government was presented in a positive light. This is what irked me the most, because I'm not naive enough to believe that there isn't a ton of nasty things that any government does when it comes to Special Ops, but I didn't get this book to listen to an author give his opinion on this stuff. Just give me the facts!

The only person I would recommend this book to, is anyone who is anti-war or who doesn't agree with how the US Government is handling the war on terror. This book would be very good for you, because it does present great information and your opinion will line up with what the author feels as well.

For anyone else, I would NOT recommend this book.There are lots of other books out there that present this same information is a much more factual presentation, and with a more interactive writing style. By the end, I could barely finish listening to this book as it was just becoming unbearable.

Dirty Wars is a very thorough retelling of the expanded global war on terror. It manages to weave together disparate actions into a larger, more visible whole which is no small feat.

However, Mr. Scahill's effort begins to wear on you a little towards the end. The overly repetitive theme of USA as bumbling agent of blind vengeance starts to feel like more of an antagonism as opposed to a legitimate analysis of events. This position also starts to make him look almost sympathetic to the terrorists - constantly pointing out JSOC and the WH's ineptitude while glossing over the actions of AQAP, Al Shabaab and others as just mere bullet points to be communicated.

All in all it's a good read and informative, but unnecessarily slanted which tends to sap credibility towards the end.

Answer: Kill them, unless you can torture them first. What was the question?

If you're looking for the country that ruthlessly eliminated indigenous peoples, tried to annex Canada in 1812, then annexed Texas from Mexico, then invaded Mexico, occupying Mexico City hoping to seize the continent by divine mandate, who invaded and conquered Hawaii, who then went after territories around the planet--you'll find she's alive and kicking, stomping and shooting.

This amply researched work reveals the dark side that so many pretend is not there or know is there but imagine there's nothing wrong with bellicose imperialism.

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